There was a constellation in the previous century : Emerson, Thoreau, Dickinson, Whitman, Poe. But unbeknownst to Eliot & Pound, underneath this constellation, lurked something more profound, of which Crane was aware (via Waldo Frank?): Melville.

What does Melville represent? A submerged, umbilical, cabalistical connection with origins, with Genesis. & not simply intuitive : his honeyheaded whale-brain grasped & absorbed both classical & biblical scriptoria; he re-invented them, like a Leonardo-literatus. (Olson, thanks to the rehabilitation of Melville 15 yrs later, revived Crane/Frank's discovery for his own purposes. Olson is Melville's pet squid.)